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An Afghani-American Writes...

 
 
Saveloy
10:36 / 18.09.01
This was posted to an email group I'm on:

"The following was sent to me by my friend ****. **** is an Afghani-American writer. He is also one of the most brilliant people I know in this life. When he writes, I read. When he talks, I listen. Here is his take on Afghanistan and the whole mess we are in:"

"I've been hearing a lot of talk about "bombing Afghanistan back to the
Stone Age." Ronn Owens, on KGO Talk Radio today, allowed that this would mean killing innocent people, people who had nothing to do with this atrocity, but "we're at war, we have to accept collateral damage. What
else can we do?" Minutes later I heard some TV pundit discussing whether we "have the belly to do what must be done."

And I thought about the issues being raised especially hard because I am from Afghanistan, and even though I've lived here for 35 years I've never lost track of what's going on there. So I want to tell anyone who
will listen how it all looks from where I'm standing.

I speak as one who hates the Taliban and Osama Bin Laden. There is no doubt in my mind that these people were responsible for the atrocity in New York. I agree that something must be done about those monsters.

But the Taliban and Ben Laden are not Afghanistan. They're not even the
government of Afghanistan. The Taliban are a cult of ignorant psychotics who took over Afghanistan in 1997. Bin Laden is a political
criminal with a plan. When you think Taliban, think Nazis. When you think Bin Laden, think Hitler. And when you think "the people of Afghanistan" think "the Jews in the concentration camps." It's not only that the Afghan people had nothing to do with this atrocity. They were the first victims of the perpetrators. They would exult if someone
would come in there, take out the Taliban and clear out the rats nest of international thugs holed up in their country.

Some say, why don't the Afghans rise up and overthrow the Taliban? The answer is, they're starved, exhausted, hurt, incapacitated, suffering. A few years ago, the United Nations estimated that there are 500,000
disabled orphans in Afghanistan--a country with no economy, no food. There are millions of widows. And the Taliban has been burying these widows alive in mass graves. The soil is littered with land mines, the farms were all destroyed by the Soviets. These are a few of the reasons why the Afghan people have not overthrown the Taliban.

We come now to the question of bombing Afghanistan back to the Stone Age. Trouble is, that's been done. The Soviets took care of it already. Make the Afghans suffer? They're already suffering. Level their houses? Done. Turn their schools into piles of rubble? Done. Eradicate their
hospitals? Done. Destroy their infrastructure? Cut them off from
medicine and health care? Too late. Someone already did all that.

New bombs would only stir the rubble of earlier bombs. Would they at least get the Taliban? Not likely. In today's Afghanistan, only the Taliban eat, only they have the means to move around. They'd slip away
and hide. Maybe the bombs would get some of those disabled orphans, they don't move too fast, they don't even have wheelchairs. But flying over Kabul and dropping bombs wouldn't really be a strike against the criminals who did this horrific thing. Actually it would only be making common cause with the Taliban--by raping once again the people they've been raping all this time

So what else is there? What can be done, then? Let me now speak with true fear and trembling. The only way to get Bin Laden is to go in there with ground troops. When people speak of "having the belly to do what
needs to be done" they're thinking in terms of having the belly to kill as many as needed. Having the belly to overcome any moral qualms about killing innocent people. Let's pull our heads out of the sand. What's
actually on the table is Americans dying. And not just because some Americans would die fighting their way through Afghanistan to Bin
Laden's hideout. It's much bigger than that folks. Because to get any troops to Afghanistan, we'd have to go through Pakistan. Would they let us? Not likely. The conquest of Pakistan would have to be first. Will other Muslim nations just stand by? You see where I'm going. We're flirting with a world war between Islam and the West.

And guess what: that's Bin Laden's program. That's exactly what he wants. That's why he did this. Read his speeches and statements. It's all right there. He really believes Islam would beat the west. It might
seem ridiculous, but he figures if he can polarize the world into Islam
and the West, he's got a billion soldiers. If the west wreaks a
holocaust in those lands, that's a billion people with nothing left to
lose, that's even better from Bin Laden's point of view. He's probably
wrong, in the end the west would win, whatever that would mean, but the
war would last for years and millions would die, not just theirs but
ours. Who has the belly for that? Bin Laden does. Anyone else?"
 
 
Naked Flame
12:05 / 18.09.01
waaaah! stop the world I wanna get off!

he's right apart from the bit about the US fighting Pakistan. Pakistan is rolling on its back and generally behaving like a good pack member before the alpha male. The problem is likely to be internal conflict in Pakistan... they have a lot of anti-US feeling out there.
 
 
Warewullf
13:40 / 18.09.01
quote: Some say, why don't the Afghans rise up and overthrow the Taliban? The answer is, they're starved, exhausted, hurt, incapacitated, suffering.

Uh, I'll admit that my knowledge of politics is sadly lacking, but don't the Taliban have huge support amongst the Afghan people? Dancing in the streets last week and all that? No?
 
 
The Damned Yankee
14:20 / 18.09.01
Who do I ask for permission to re-post that letter on my website? That was fucking brilliant.
 
 
autopilot disengaged
16:52 / 18.09.01
yup; over at my peacenik obsessive thread: chomsky on the bombings. the quote comes from Tamim Ansary, and you can find the complete text over at ZNet. i think it may also have been used by salon...
 
 
Naked Flame
18:08 / 18.09.01
quote: but don't the Taliban have huge support amongst the Afghan people? Dancing in the streets last week and all that? No?

I don't think the average Afhgan is dancing right now. I hear Kabul is half-empty.

The Taleban has been growing in popularity only by killing its opponents, or forcing them out of the country. As far as I can tell it's essentially fascist in character, i.e. you are either a member or you're the enemy/potential enemy/meat.
 
  
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